FEELING BLUE: Henrik Lundqvist and the Rangers, who faced the Islanders last night, have a better shot at getting lucky in the lottery than staging a late-season rally for a playoff spot.AP

It flatters the home team to call last night’s match at the Garden against the Islanders a last stand for the Rangers, for that carries the connotation that the Blueshirts have made much of a stand at all prior to this.

Still, it’s not the perception that the Rangers are all but done, that is reality. The math is the reality the Blueshirts have to face. Despite the Rangers’ 5-0 victory over the Islanders last night, they are in 10th place with nine games to go, five points behind the eighth-place Bruins and two points behind the ninth-place Thrashers, who have nine to go in the season.

The fact is that the Rangers headed into last night equidistant between the last playoff berth and last place in the East, the spot currently held by the Maple Leafs. Before the season concludes, the Blueshirts will play a home-and-home with Toronto, on the road this Saturday and at home on April 7.

If that doesn’t represent the Rangers’ best chance to make up ground in the potato-sack race for the postseason they have been stumbling and bumbling through by winning two of the last nine (2-5-2), it sure represents this club’s best chance of turning a Sow’s year into a silk purse by dropping down into a draft lottery position — perhaps even a shot at the first overall pick, should they be bad on the ice and lucky in the drawing.

Being bad probably won’t represent as much of a hurdle as being lucky.

The teams with the worst five records in the league participate in the lottery to determine the club that selects first overall. Teams have the ability — however slim the percentages — to move up four spots but can only fall one position. The Rangers have not participated in the lottery since its inception in 1995.

The Blueshirts snapped a three-game losing streak in regulation that had left the team 23rd overall, one point out of 26th, two points out of 27th, three points out of 28th (the Islanders), and seven points out of 29th (Toronto).

A finish of last overall that would guarantee one of the first two picks in the Entry Draft is seemingly out of reach, with the Oilers nine points clear of the Maple Leafs and 16 points behind/ahead of the Rangers.

Two teams have moved from fifth to first. In 2000, the Islanders used that pick to select Rick DiPietro. In 2007, the Blackhawks jumped four positions to select Patrick Kane.

Of course, a high pick is no guarantee of success, as the Blueshirts’ selection of Al Montoya at sixth overall in 2004 can attest.

Still, if the Rangers miss the tournament for the first time since the lockout, it does behoove them to fall as low as possible as opposed to mounting a late-season rally to clinch 20th place overall.

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Ryan Callahan, who sustained a right leg injury in a second-period collision on Sunday with Zdeno Chara that sidelined the winger for the third period of the 2-1 defeat in Boston, had 19:50 of ice time after missing practice on Monday and Tuesday.

Tonight’s game in New Jersey is the first of a six-game trip that includes matches against the Leafs, Islanders, Lightning, Panthers and Sabres.